I have reached another major painting objective for the year: All of my Baccus Early Imperial Roman Legionaries are now complete:
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| Not Pictured: One Legion of green shields and 1 unit of eastern archers |
I have been sitting on many of these pieces since 2004. The difference between the old and the new sculpts is actually quite striking:
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| Original Baccus EIR sculpts |
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| New Sculpts |
The old ones are very squat and look to be about 5'6" and 280lbs. The newer ones are much nicer, where you can obviously make out they are carrying Pila and not poles.
I am also happy with the auxilia figs
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| Auxilia I |
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| Auxilia II |
Although after all of the effort in trying to paint shield patterns for both the Legionaries and the Auxilia, it seems pointless once you get more than 50cm away from the minis. I am really find myself agreeing with Neil Shuck on his
Meeple and Miniatures podcast in that 6mm painting is best approached as an 'impressionistic' art, rather than the high level of detail I look for in 15mm and above. I still like the idea of putting a little bit of extra paint on the shields to give the impression of a design, but anything more just gets lost. I still have 48 Roman Cavalry to complete, then it is on into the Briton's and Gauls.
I do need to get a lot more auxilia, especially missile troops. For now, I have a few units of Marian Legionaries available to serve double duty:
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| Republican Roman contingent |
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| Vague attempt at shield blazons |
For the units, I am tentatively declaring them Legions in scale, although that may vary depending on the rules I decide to go with. They could just as easily serve as Cohorts at a 1:10 ration not including the command stands. (or reorganize with 6 stand units representing 1 century each) The command stands only have two ranks in order to allow for a unit marker, although I am not sure if I am happy with the appearance yet.
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| I was shooting for Legions that served in Britain |
All told I have completed roughly 2000 6mm Romans this year including the 800 Punic Era ones I did for a trade for a friend. Once you get the hang of them they are really quite fun:
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| This year's personal collection |
Yeah, I did dabble myself in 10mm for a little while. As able to piant them up no bother but once on the table I couldn't make it much detail and all the troops looked much the same to my old eyes. Went back to 15mm.
ReplyDeleteI daresay the effect is worse in 6mm but they always look good on other poeples blogs.
My preference is for even larger at 28mm, but when you look at the troops in the first picture at army level, they really do "look the part", and if you're doing 6mm, that's the point. To each their own; each scale has their own strengths and weaknesses.
ReplyDeleteGreat productivity!